Abstracts fra Bibliotek for Læger 4/2015

 

Leder: Psykiatrihistorie
Redaktionen

Originalartikel: Psykiatriens historiografi
Per Vestergaard

The historiography of Danish psychiatry

Bibl Læger 2015;207:274-89

Comprehensive descriptions of the history of Danish psychiatry are lacking. The few attempts made so far are listed in this paper. A wealth of historically oriented papers have, however, appeared, and each of these is dealing with an aspect of Danish psychiatry as it developed from the early nineteenth century until today. This article describes the various subjects dealt with, the multitude of authorships involved and the sources from which the papers can be brought to light. The subjects of the papers, again, can be divided into general historical overviews, detailed subject descriptions of patients, professionals or treatment methods, local history often linked to historically important asylums and, finally, biographical sketches of patients and professionals. The problems arising when medical doctors venture to enter the realm of the historians is debated in connection with the much contested “whig” history writing, where successful developments of a profession and the heroics of the founding fathers are uncritically featured.

Originalartikel: Lidelse under friheden til at være sig selv – depression og samtid
Rasmus Johnsen

Suffering under the freedom to be oneself – depression and contemporarity

Bibl Læger 2015;207:290-309.

Today, clinical depression is among the most challenging and costly mental illnesses worldwide. But “depression” is more than a clinical phenomenon. In contemporary Western culture, the ailment has also become a central part of the cultural vocabulary, which we use when we speak about non-pathological illness. In this article, I follow Alain Ehrenberg’s thesis that depression has become a cultural artefact, taking the form of a “pathology of freedom”. I will claim that with this transformation, the ailment is inscribed into a long tradition in the history of mental suffering. In the article, I investigate three historical examples of ailments which are also structured culturally like pathologies of freedom: ancient melancholy, acedia in the Middle Ages and neurasthenia in the nineteenth century. Finally, I return to depression in the contemporary world, arguing that these examples can shed light on the status of depression as a cultural artefact today.

Rettelse

Kvartalets genstand
Maiken Rude Nørup

Originalartikel: Fra morfinisme til dobbeltdiagnoser 

Stofmisbrug i dansk og europæisk psykiatri
Jesper Vaczy Kragh

From morphinism to dual diagnoses

Bibl Læger 2015;207:312-32

During the mid nineteenth century British and French physicians issued the first reports on hypodermic injections of morphine. It was first assumed that morphine injections would circumvent the habit-forming property of orally ingested opiates, and few warnings about the risk of addiction were published in the 1850s and 1860s. Morphine was hailed as a potent drug that could be used for a wide range of painful disorders and diseases. Widespread use of morphine, however, soon produced a drug addiction problem. Reports on misuse of morphine were published in Germany, France and Denmark in the early 1870s and 1880s. These late nineteenth century studies highlighted the fact that physicians had a high risk of addiction and that most morphinists were found in the ranks of medical professionals. Physicians’ addiction posed a thorny problem for the medical profession. The Danish health authorities sought to address the problem internally and remained quiet about it in public. It was not until the late 1940s and early 1950s that drug addiction became an issue in the public discourse in Denmark. However, when it did, it became a heated topic, although it was not addicted physicians, who became the centre of media attention, but rather people of lower socioeconomic status. In this period, co-morbidity in drug-abuse patients became more common, but way up until the late twentieth century psychiatric textbooks often stressed an antagonism between drug addiction and schizophrenia.

Originalartikel: Mellem arv og miljø – dansk børne- og ungdomspsykiatri 1891-1940
Jennie Sejr Junghans

Between inheritance and environment – Danish child and adolescent psychiatry from 1891 to 1940

Bibl Læger 2015;207:333-57

This article examines the theory and practice of Danish child psychiatry from 1891 to 1940, using medical textbooks and articles as well as patient records and registers from Middelfart Mental Hospital as source material. In the 1890s, the theory and practice of Danish psychiatry was highly influenced by ideas of degeneration, i.e. the notion that insanity, criminality and other deviant behaviour was biologically inherited and passed on from generation to generation. Thus, deviant conduct of children and adolescents was explained as a result of bad biological inheritance, leaving out other modes of explanation. At the end of the 1930s, however, attitudes towards mentally disturbed children were changing. In the Danish psychiatric literature, it was acknowledged that psychological and environmental factors could contribute to the development of mental disorders. Consequently, the interplay between inheritance and environment was stressed in Danish psychiatric textbooks and articles of the 1930s and 1940s. Despite this, changes in the psychiatric practice at Middelfart Mental Hospital were much less clear. Hospital treatment basically aimed at adjusting children and adolescents to work and behave in an acceptable way. The most notable change in the practice at Middelfart Mental Hospital was a shift in diagnostic procedures. In the 1920s, “psychopathy” entered the field of Danish psychiatry. At the end of the 1930s, the most commonly used diagnosis for children and adolescents was psychopathy.

Et billede fra min hverdag
Bent Rosenbaum

Originalartikel: »Men jeg blev altså ikke mødt med så meget forståelse«

Patienters erindringer om indlæggelser og medicinsk behandling på psykiatriske hospitaler i 1960’erne og 1970’erne
Stine Grønbæk Jensen

“They didn't really understand me”

Patients’ memories of hospitalization and medical treatment in the 1960s and 1970s

Bibl Læger 2015;207:360-83

Archives of psychiatric hospitals often contain limited information of the views of institutionalized patients. In order to explore the experiences of patients and care leavers, the research project “In Care, in History” was established. Part of the project involved the collation of eyewitness accounts from patients who had experiences with Danish psychiatric institutions in the period 1945 to 1980. Lifestory interviews, covering the interviewee’s entire life, were used. The study of these patients’ testimonies shows a variety of experiences with hospitalization and medical treatment. Some patients found that the treatment worked, while others had negative experiences with medication. A prevalent feeling among the patients is that their own perspectives were regarded as irrelevant and that they had few options regarding treatment. Potentials for further historical research in this area are discussed in the last part of the article.